With the proliferation of online commerce and automated systems, the amount of data that is being stored in databases has risen dramatically. With this steep increase in database size and transaction volumes, the ability to find information in a database without a reference has become extremely difficult. To help ameliorate these problems, database visualization has emerged. Database visualization is the process of displaying data and its interrelationships visually, rather than textually. Database visualization allows a user to peruse large amounts of data in order to unearth trends and other knowledge that might otherwise go undetected.
This application is related to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/401,101 entitled “System and Method for Performing Similarity Searching” by David B. Wheeler and Matthew J. Clay, filed on Sep. 22, 1999, and provisional patent application No. 60/157,477 entitled “System and Method for Transforming a Relational Database to a Hierarchical Database” by John R. Ripley and Steven C. Wotring, filed on Oct. 1, 1999. Both applications are incorporated by reference herein.